Beschreibung:

GRAN COLOMBIA] Constitucion de la Republica de Colombia. Caracas: Reimpresa con permiso superior por Juan Gutierrez, 1822. First edition. Modern three-quarters leather over cloth boards. 8 x 5 1/4 inches (20.5 x 14 cm); with printed wrapper, viii, title, 40 pp., lower wrapper. Worming affecting wrapper, upper margin and the text of the preliminary leaves as well as the rear wrapper and final text leaves, the wrappers toned and the header of the front wrapper marked "1821" in ink in an early hand. This is one of the earliest issues of the constitution of "Gran Colombia," which comprised a huge portion of South America including Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru, western Guyana and northwest Brazil. The work is also known as the Constitutión of Cúcuta for the Congress that had assembled there in August 1821 and the first issue was printed at Rosario de Cúcuta in August or September 1821 (only one copy recorded at British Library and none at auction). The decree in this volume prints the order to reprint the constitution at Bogota in two or three thousand copies (dated November 1821) and to print one thousand copies of this Caracas edition (dated December 1821). The Bogota printing was included in a larger compilation of laws and survives in higher numbers as its print run was two to three times greater than this edition. Sabin, acknowledged that this separate Caracas edition was "very rare" and we trace only the Harvard University copy and none at auction. This constitution held until the 1831 dissolution of Gran Colombia. Sabin 14573. C